Moving on …

In my small way, I took part in the crafting of The Joke on America. For years I thought there was nothing funnier. Conceived during the waning months of World War II, I had no idea I was a Baby Boomer, but that, in the end, was what I was. And being a member of this large and fortunate generation gave me the leisure to develop quite a sense of humor when it came to basic human values.

When I was a student at the University of California at Berkeley in the late 1960s, we were the brave new world’s social engineers. We were the innovators. We were busy innovating the brave new world where everything about the old world of our parents seemed either hilarious or evil.

Our program was quite clear early on and it hasn’t changed a jot, it has simply gotten more pervasive and elaborate. After all, we’re older now and we’re in control. We can finally fund these things. With your money.

So onward this generation presses. Nothing is important; not jobs, not international terror. Socialism. The planners are at the helm now and they are going to attempt to transform our country into that statest entity they’ve dreamed about for so long.

God, if he didn’t emerge from 500 mikes of pure Sandoz LSD, was just a funny old guy a little bit like Santa Claus but with less of a user base.

The Bill of Rights was okay as long as you could figure out someway to erase a few of the amendments involving guns and add a host of new ones involving groups.

The Constitution? Too long and too arcane to really read with care. It was a given so what did we care?

History? The only really happening history was the future, man. Ours.

The United States? They were really “AmeriKKKa” — Satan incarnate.

The US Military? Baby killers and agents of Satan.

The Police? Pigs.

The Viet Cong, Fidel Castro, and a host of other evil dictators and fascists? Heroes of “The People.”

The People? Really wonderful as long as you didn’t really have to hang out with them.

Voting in political parties? Stupid. We were into “participatory democracy” which involved really long meetings. ( This is now known as “emergent democracy” and involves really long online discussion threads.)

We believed in sex and drugs and rock and roll.

We were determined to resist “the man” on all levels.

Except, of course, “these folks” now are “the man.”

We’re the first in line to bitch and moan and hate a country that makes our freedom possible. More than that we’re also in love with the privilege, comfort, money and safety that makes it possible for us to mouth off without limit. And finally, we’re coming to understand that we are not our parents’ generation, we’re “The Not-So-Great” Generation, and, like our president, deep down we’re cowards.

We say we’re ‘afraid’ of losing our cherished ‘freedom’ to the jackbooted legions of Conservative Brownshirts that might stifle our dissent from every street corner. That’s really what a lot of us think. That’s really just how bull-goose looney we’ve become.
****
As a result, we like the slogans, books, movies, TV shows, politicians and publications that confirm for us the deep liberal dream that if we are just understanding enough, long enough, apologize for living enough, and offer enough in the way of bribes, the oppressed of the world will come to love us… and then just leave us alone.

Sound familiar? Ringing any bells?

My generation springs from a culture where words seldom have any consequences as long as you choose the right ones. Because of this words don’t seem like weapons to us. Words, to my generation, are merely poses at cocktail parties at best, the latest glib lyrics of some pot-drenched rock idol who believes that having a hundred voice choir screech out “Impeach the President” is the latest iteration of cool, until the new, cooler president steps forward and administers another slap of pap to the brain.

Words without argument. Slogans detached from reality. This bumpersticker mentality pervades political debate.

When I look at the spectacle that my Boomer generation has made of itself, a generation that had everything going for it, that had every opportunity, and came up with Caramel Soy Lattes, “Impeach the President,” [and now Barack Obama] all I can say is:

“I resign the Revolution. I’m joining the Resistance.”

Welcome aboard.

(Ocean Cat – your comments will not appear as long as you continue to post under some obscene slur of my name, and although I changed your last comment to include YOUR name, not mine, I will not do so for those comments with my avatar on them)

8 Comments on “Moving on …”

I think that’s what he’s trying to do, perhaps by attempting to get others to wake up, grow up and wise up, like he did.

However, his former partners-in-whine will only see him as a traitor to the cause, not as someone who has taken a step back from the edge of insanity and looked at the situation with a more mature, rational point of view.

Sadly, there are fewer of him than the other perpetually aggrieved, self-righteous warriors of the left, who will go to their graves believing that only they are right and everyone else is wrong. Their sanctimony prevents them from seeing reality.

I learned recently through Facechimp that my former son-in-law, who was editor of the campus conservative newspaper here at University of Michigan when he and my daughter met, and who then went on to Washington DC to take a job with Morton Kondrackie, now loves the new health care legislation, and is trying to school others on how MEAN they are.

Yeah, it’s a shame. He used to be able to dismantle his fellow classmates when it came to politics. I mean absolutely annihilate them with facts and figures and leave them steppin’ and fetchin’ like their asses were on fire and their hair was ketchin’. But I don’t know what happened to him.